Josef Herman Art

Polish-Jewish artist Josef Herman, sometimes better known as Joe Bach, was born in Warsaw, studied at the Warsaw School of Art and worked briefly as a printer and graphic designer. Upon leaving Poland for Brussels in 1938, he managed to escape the Nazi invasion of Belgium by fleeing to Great Britain. Herman lived in Glasgow for four years before moving to small-town Wales. However, his entire family was killed during the Holocaust.

Herman’s distinctive work was bold, diverse, sometimes colourful, and always politicized and engaged with the labouring people that surrounded him. From 1944 until 1955, Herman lived in the South Wales industrial town of Ystradgynlais, where the locals fondly nicknamed him “Joe Bach.” When commissioned to design and paint a mural for the iconic 1951 Festival of Britain, Joe Bach chose as his subject the Ystradgynlais miners. The resulting image represented six men in repose after a day’s toil and is now held at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea. Although the damp Welsh climate disagreed with his health and forced him to move briefly to the drier climes of Spain, Herman was awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the 1962 Welsh National Eisteddfod.

Between 1955 and 1972, Herman and his wife Nini Ettinger lived in rural Suffolk. The untimely death of their young daughter caused the couple to move to London, where Herman remained working until his death. His work was honoured by election to the Royal Academy of Arts and the award of an OBE.

(Biography provided by Stern Pissarro Gallery)